They're Three Very Long Stories
by nightmaremoon418
Summary: How did the Crystal Gems as we know them come together? Despite the title, this is actually a series of short stories that make up one longer one, focusing on Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, and Rose Quartz before and after they met.
1. the ice queen and the eternal flame

**A/N: I'm starting out with the "birth" of each gem, but this will probably move around a lot with regards to the time each story is set. I like writing in this style and I enjoy seeing what can be done with it, so I'm trying my hand at forming one large story out of smaller ones.**

 **First up, Ruby, Sapphire, and a bit of Garnet, who will probably get her own spotlight later on.**

ruby

From the moment she's formed, she's doing everything wrong.

She's too small, that she can tell from one look at the rest of the gems popping out of the walls surrounding her. They all look big and strong enough to conquer a planet, and she's, well, tiny.

She tries to fix this, make herself bigger, but she can't. Desperately she squeezes her eyes shut and concentrates hard on growing taller but she can't. Nothing's working and they're starting to move.

The red gems move in a singular mass down the mountainside and towards an array of warp pads. They uniformly snap into place and off they go.

Homeworld is big. Everything is big. Ruby is small. They make her reform, again and again, but she just can't get it right.

She tries to make up for it.

She may be small, but that doesn't mean she isn't smart. She knows what these gems will do to someone weaker than them. So she tries not to make herself an easy target. She's loud and aggressive and angry and violent.

And this is wrong, too.

The higher-up gems whisper about her, say things about her. She's difficult. She's unstable. She's uncontrollable. She's defective.

Defective is an ugly word, and for good reason. It denotes a gem who didn't form right, who can't do her job right, who's useless. Might as well be destroyed so they can start over and try again. If you're labeled defective, you'd better prove yourself.

She tries. And she's not bad at it. She's just as strong as her taller fellows. She can pack as much heat in her fist when sparring as she's supposed to-maybe even more so. This, too, is wrong. It turns out she can't control her fiery powers as well as she should and gets labeled "dangerous". She doesn't know if this is better or worse than defective. Combat gems are supposed to be dangerous, but not to each other. The threat of being shattered constantly hangs over her head.

They give her something to control her. They put shackles on her wrists that direct her heat inwards rather than outwards so every time she tries to use it, she feels an awful burning sensation inside of her hands and up her arms and farther into her body the longer she tries. She quickly learns. If she removed her shackles in battle, she'll be a powerful force for sure.

Life goes on. It's hard. The other rubies treat her like dirt, of course. She's one of the few gems they can regularly abuse and get away with it. It's not like they have contact with anyone lower on the hierarchy. Ruby can't help lashing out, which makes her work up a burst of flame, which makes her shackles hurt her, which keeps her quiet until the next time someone trips her just to watch her get mad.

Life goes on. Until.

sapphire

She doesn't know why the gem to her right is staring at her until she whispers, "Your _eye_." That gem has two eyes, and so does every other blue gem here. She tries to fix it. There's no time-it shouldn't be this hard. She gives up and materializes hair to cover her eye until she can think of something else.

They're transported to Homeworld in groups of three. This site doesn't just produce sapphires, but aquamarines and lapis lazulis. Blue Diamond's gems are similar enough in form and function to be grouped together. They all have hair and dresses that look like flowing water. Sapphire imagines they must look fascinatingly beautiful channeling their trademark powers. She can't wait to learn.

Some of them are more adept with manipulating ice. It's rare, but she's one of them. Nothing wrong with that, but it's not the only unusual thing about her, she quickly learns. She's fast-faster than even a quartz built for speed and agility. She can levitate short distances, too. And she has future vision.

This is a gift, they say, and after much testing of her abilities they take her to Blue Diamond, who regards her with interest and asks her how it works.

She explains that she doesn't see just one future, but all the possible paths it can take. From there she can choose the most likely outcome and use that to make a decision. She doesn't quite know how best to describe it until she compares it to water, and Blue Diamond's eyes light up.

She becomes the Diamond's oracle, predicting possible results of missions and assisting in battle strategies. She is very important.

Sometimes she wishes she could participate in the action like the other gems she was formed alongside. If her theory that her single eye had something to do with her "gift" is true, then she was one eye away from fighting as a team with the two gems she shared a warp pad with.

Her current situation is less dangerous, of course. It's also less exciting, but Blue Diamond can't risk losing such a valuable gem. She isn't leaving this area.

She is safe. She is protected. She is important. She wants to scream.

Life goes on. Until.

garnet

When they first meet, they're sparring. They each have to have a match with another gem to find out what they're good at, if their fighting styles need work, and if they have any special skills.

Ruby is straining to prove herself. She musters up as much force as she can and throws a punch that scorches her opponent's cheek.

Sapphire is undaunted. She places a cool hand on that spot, waits for an opportunity, and retaliates with a freezing hit that leaves icy trails of blue creeping their way across Ruby's face.

The red gem may be strong, but the blue one somehow starts managing to dodge her every move. She's fast enough to dash out of her way at the last minute, leaps into the air and stays there long enough to float down and catch her by surprise, and seems to know just when and where Ruby's going to swing.

"How are you _doing_ this?" Ruby gasps.

Sapphire shrugs. "I suppose I'm just good."

They don't see each other again for a while. It's not until they start settling into a routine and are finally sure of what their roles are now that the status quo gets interrupted.

It's entirely their own faults, of course. They both made the decision to sneak out and happened upon the same one-way warp pad.

They don't have downtime often, but Ruby realizes her chance to leave without anyone noticing and takes it. The rubies are a boisterous crowd and among all the shouting, laughing, and punching each other no one sees her slip out of the room. Sometimes being small has its advantages. She steals down the long, empty hallways, which seem spooky and ominous without anyone in them, and finds an unoccupied chamber with various familiar structures scattered about.

She can just take any one of these and go. She can escape right now and never be seen again. She'll be free.

She's just savoring the silence of this little place when she hears someone coming.

Ruby darts onto the nearest pad and closes her eyes, hoping by the time whoever's approaching this room notices a warp pad was activated she'll be long gone.

Sapphire couldn't take it anymore. If Blue Diamond was going to leave her alone, she might as well have asked her to escape, right?

She is careful. She makes use of her levitation and much use of her future vision. She avoids closed doors unless there's a zero percent chance they'll be locked. She hears someone coming behind her and begins walking faster and ducks into the nearest recess in the wall.

For an instant, she sees a flash of light.

It's gone before she can figure out where it came from, but she can see it's a warp chamber.

Immediately she dips into her future vision. She can see an overwhelming number of possibilities, based on which warp she takes. There are many in which she dies as soon as she gets where it goes, and more where she isn't killed but no one ever finds her gem. There are a few where she lives, but she can't see much beyond that. And there is one where another gem is already there.

Sapphire has not often used future vision just for herself, but when she has, she's tried her best to not take risks.

She doesn't have much time to make a decision here.

When she meets the wayward Ruby, and when Ruby meets the defecting Sapphire, everything changes. They are free. They are even more trapped. They are constantly under threat of being caught and suffering terrible fates. Garnet's future vision shows her all sorts of dreadful possibilities.

She is strong. She is smart. She can fight. She will get through this.

Life goes on. Until.


	2. red goes well with blue

"It's you."

Ruby hadn't expected anyone else to find this place, but there she was, a blue gem with her eyes hidden and her body shrouded in a typical water-mage dress. She couldn't tell if the sapphire was staring at her or not, but she had only ever seen one who looked like that.

She would never have imagined she'd ever see the gem she had to fight to show off her abilities again. They were from different Diamond factions and weren't meant to interact, though corundums of different colors were occasionally paired up in situations that called for it. Besides, she'd heard that this one was special, and was kept as Blue Diamond's personal seer.

"It's me."

Sapphire hadn't given much thought to who the red gem in her vision was, only that she needed to leave quickly and that route looked like an adventure no matter what. She was a bit afraid-despite her small size, this gem was a ruby and they were powerful.

The little gem was already on her feet, balling her hands into fists. "What are you doing here?"

"I-I was-" She doesn't know whether to tell the truth or not.

"Did a Diamond send you here?"

"No." The ruby is glaring at her, but she's trembling slightly. Sapphire doesn't think she'll be reporting back to any of her superiors.

"You're her-Blue Diamond's oracle, right?"

"Right. How'd you know?"

"I overhear a lot of gossip. I guess you wanted to escape?"

Sapphire relaxes. "Yes. You, too?"

"Well, who wouldn't, in my place?"

Peaceful, is the only word either of them can think of to describe this place. Plants with violet-colored leaves form an arcing canopy over their heads, and all manner of vibrant flowers bloom under their feet. Somewhere deep inside the forest, animals call to each other and rustle through the undergrowth. The gems have never seen anything quite like it.

"Why did you want to leave, anyway?" Ruby asks her new companion. "Your place seemed a lot nicer compared to where most of us have to live."

"They didn't let me out," Sapphire tells her simply. "What about you? Did they hurt you badly?"

In response, Ruby holds up her hands. On each wrist is a cold gray manacle. "Remember those heat powers I had when we first met? Not anymore."

"But-"

"If you can't control your power, you don't get to use it outside of battle. Just like that."

"Do those let you summon your weapon?"

As it turns out, neither of them know how. So they practice together.

Ruby finds hers first. It takes a while, but she eventually gets it while punching a tree.

"I can't do anything right!" she exclaims. "They're right, I am defective, it's a good thing I'm here instead of clogging up their ranks with my worthless—"

"It's alright," Sapphire tells her. "It's not your fault." She doesn't like seeing Ruby like this. Clearly they've made her think she's nothing, which Sapphire never had to worry about.

"I bet you anything it's these stupid—useless—horrible—things—oh!"

She swiftly withdraws a smoking fist from the now-splintered wood. It's now covered by some kind of red glove. "I did it-I think."

"Gauntlets?" Sapphire nods approvingly. "Nice."

Something thumps heavily next to her foot. It's one of her wrist shackles.

"How'd I even do that?" Ruby murmurs.

"I guess all the anger inside you had to manifest somewhere," Sapphire says.

"Yeah," Ruby grins. "I guess so."

A flicker of a smile twitches Sapphire's lips.

"Hey, you do have emotions after all."

Ruby realizes this might not be a very sensitive thing to say.

"Sorry, I mean-"

"It's fine." Sapphire smiles a bit more, showing hints of what she might look like genuinely happy. Ruby wants to make her laugh. She gets the feeling Sapphire hasn't had the chance to really talk to another gem in a long time.

"You have no idea what I'm concealing," Sapphire says. "Now, I'll try to muster up enough rage to get that thing off your other hand."

As it turns out, Sapphire has a hard time summoning her weapon, too.

"Maybe I just can't do it," she finally says.

"That's okay," says Ruby. "If we run into any trouble, I can do the fighting. You can be the brains and I'll be the brawn."

"How about we're both the brains _and_ the brawn?"

"What?"

"I mean, we can figure out what we'll be good at later, right? Who knows, maybe you're actually a brilliant strategist and I can take on a full-sized quartz gem." Sapphire doesn't know if either of those things are true; there are so many possibilities in her future vision that she can't decide where to look first.

She likes it. It's exciting to not know what will happen for once.

"So when we go back—or not." Ruby is gazing up at the sky. "I don't want to go back to a place where we don't know what we're capable of because they never let us try anything new."

"See, you can be the smart one," Sapphire says.

"That wasn't me being smart. We both know it."

"You're right again," says Sapphire. "I think we'll make a good team."

"Yeah," says Ruby, "a good partnership, at least."


	3. pearls of great price

**A/N: I've wanted to write about Pearls and their role in gem society ever since we found out what they're supposed to be like. Here I gave Pearl the ability to get information about certain things by looking at them, but only on Homeworld during the time of her creation. Which is just to make exposition easier.**

 **I also deliberately made it vague whether Rose is a Diamond or not. While it's very likely that she is or was, it may not be confirmed. However, she is definitely a gem with a complicated past and dark secrets.**

She is born in the dark, out of a warm and quiet womb known as the Abalone. There are many others like her forming alongside one another, and they all step into the world at once.

She surveys her surroundings, taking in the history of the place like her gem is made to do, so she can retain information for whoever her owner might be. The others are standing still, facing forward, awaiting instructions. It dawns on her that she is not supposed to be looking around.

Pearls used to come from a single source, a gemlike being known as Nacre, or Mother-of-Pearl, who devoted loving care and attention to each of her children and made them all beautiful and special in their own ways. Then Homeworld discovered how useful these pearls could be, and set to work creating artificial sources of them so they could be mass-produced like in Kindergartens. Once they could do all sorts of things, from building and repairing gem technology to singing and dancing in Diamond theaters, but now they are created as blank slates to be programmed to their owner's desires.

(They aren't allowed to get too intelligent, though. Homeworld knows what pearls could be capable of, but would not like to know what would happen if they had a bit more power.)

They are not mere disposable commodities, of course. They are treated with care and precision by the gems who come to march them off to their owners, who are highly ranked gems looking for someone to hold their things.

They stand side by side in a glistening, completely spotless room as a tall and imposing Beryl goes down the line inspecting the new pearls, making notes with a projection from the gem on her forehead. She stops when she gets to Pearl.

"Defective," she mutters. "Misshapen gem, resulting in the following bodily projection abnormalities..."

Pearl watches and listens as this gem circles her, noting each of her imperfections, every way she isn't like the others. She hadn't thought about any of this when she was forming. She's rather indignant about it but doesn't think it would be a good idea to voice her displeasure.

"Take this one for harvesting," the Beryl says, handing her off to a pair of citrine quartzes.

"What?" she says aloud.

"We're taking you for harvesting," says one of the yellow gems, now escorting her down the long, gleaming hallway. She speaks slowly, as if to a fresh Kindergartener, and her partner laughs. Pearl understands how other gems view her, and knows she is not a precious jewel at all. "You're defective, and you won't be of much use like that, so we're reusing your gem to try again."

They don't expect her to try to escape. She could make a run for it any minute.

But where would she go? This place looks like nothing but halls, doors her gem can't open, and just the empty abyss of space on the outside. She supposes she could try to find her group of pearls again, try to blend in with them-

"Where are you two taking her?"

A towering gem stands before them, wearing a flowing white dress and surrounded by clouds of pink curls. The citrines bow their heads to her, but she doesn't seem angry, just concerned.

"We're taking this one to be harvested, Rose," the one on Pearl's right says. "A defective pearl, you know..."

Pearl looks up at this gem, Rose. Her pre-programmed databases tell her that "Rose" is not a gem, but there is a Rose Quartz. This gem doesn't look like a common quartz, though. She looks important.

"Why don't you give her to me?" asks Rose.

"Are you sure about that?" the citrine on Pearl's left says, a bit nervously. "We could use her gem to make more..."

"It doesn't matter all that much," says Rose. "You produce them so fast anyway-and I think I can...find a use for this one."

The citrines hesitate. "If you want, I guess."

And just like that, Pearl has an owner.

Well, not really.

She goes with Rose to the pink gem's private chamber, where they stand alone and facing each other.

Pearl bows to her.

"There's no need to do that," Rose says, a little sharply.

Pearl straightens up.

"I mean..." Rose softens. "I wanted to give you a second chance. I don't want you to have to live like...like some kind of glorified decoration."

"What do you want for me, then?" Pearl asks. "Pearls aren't made for much more than entertainment and storage."

Rose is silent for some time. Finally she says, "I want to teach you things. I want you to use your ability to store information, but for yourself. And I want you to stay with me, but only for your own safety. I want you to do things for your own enjoyment, find out what you're good at beyond entertainment and storage. I want you to be your own gem, and not just another pearl."

Pearl thinks about this. She will have some degree of freedom. She will be able to learn valuable information and try doing things that pearls aren't supposed to do. It's exciting and a bit frightening.

"I don't want you to just do what I want," says Rose. "If that makes sense."

"Okay," says Pearl slowly. "You want me...to not do what you want."

"Sorry, I know it's confusing..."

"No, I understand." It bothers her, when gems assume Pearl won't understand something just because she's not built to be smart. Even Rose, who means well.

"And I know I'm not giving you a lot of options-we won't get in trouble, for me having you here. I'm a well-respected gem, and if I want a defective Pearl they can't really say anything about it."

She sounds proud of that.

"I think you should stay with me, though. Most gems...aren't very respectful to pearls."

"I know." Pearl wonders if Rose thinks she doesn't know anything besides what she's already seen.

"But I encourage you to speak your mind. If I'm doing anything you don't like, by all means tell me."

"Alright, then," she says. "I just want to say—I don't need to be taught everything. I can understand things that...that most gems can. And I know how pearls are treated, I just needed to exist as one for one day."

"Oh," says Rose. "I'm so sorry-I haven't met many pearls. I didn't mean to offend you."

"Just talk to me like you would to an equal."

"I'll try."

Pearl surveys Rose's room. It's beautiful, and filled with all sorts of things. She gets a lot of information about the various plants Rose is cultivating, but it doesn't mean much to her; Rose will have to elaborate. There's a shimmering stone pool filled with some kind of pink water, flowing from the eyes of a statue of Rose. Her gem tells her these are Rose's tears, which-

"That fountain is full of my healing tears," Rose tells her. "It may sound strange, but my tears have the power to mend any wounds or damage in gems or gem-based artifacts."

"I know," says Pearl. "I can get information about almost anything on Homeworld from my gem."

"Oh! I'm sorry, I did it again-"

"No, it's alright," says Pearl. She likes hearing Rose explain things; she seems like she enjoys having someone to tell about her powers and magical items. It dawns on her that she doesn't want to just know everything from looking at it; she wants to learn new things for herself.

Rose is beautiful. And she is genuinely kind. She doesn't quite know how to interact with gems who are below her status, but she is sincerely trying to make this work. Pearl can't resent her.

She wonders where this will go. This gem saved her life, but maybe she is the type who gets bored of pearls easily and does this with a lot of them. In any case, she doesn't seem like the type to treat her servants cruelly.

"Can you tell me anything about this?" Pearl asks her, pointing to the vines speckled with huge pink flowers creeping across one wall.

Rose smiles. "That's one of my favorites."

Pearl likes Rose's ideas. In time she will follow her into battle to defend those ideas. She will travel to places she's never seen and learn to fight and do all sorts of things that pearls aren't supposed to do.

(What pearls are supposed to do is become totally loyal to their masters, to follow them to the ends of the earth. Though they aren't supposed to feel any genuine emotional attachment to another gem, and masters aren't supposed to care about their pearls. In a sense they are not much different from quartzes.)

But for now, she learns about the plants. You never know what might be useful later on.


	4. a certified kindergartner

**A/N: Now that we're going to get some more backstory about the origins of the Crystal Gems in the next Stevenbomb, parts of this might become non-canon. That's okay, though, because canon divergence is a thing!**

 **I think we've gotten the most detail so far on Amethyst's origins, but there's always more to the story. I also think that her child-like personality in the past was partly due to having spent the majority of her life completely alone until she found a new family of people who were older and more experienced than her, and since Gems' aging might be related to how old they feel, she felt like the baby of the family. Until Steven came along, that is.**

The world is huge, and dark, and cold, and empty.

Oh, sure, there's plenty of things in it. There are lots of rocks, and a bunch of weird machines scattered about, and the giant walls surrounding the place are covered in holes just like hers. But there are no other things like her.

She knows how she got here – she was inside the wall, waiting for the right time to come out, and when it came she made herself a body and burst out, leaving behind a perfectly her-sized hole. And now, she supposes, she lives here.

Amethyst. Her name is Amethyst. This she knows.

Right away she sets off exploring. The place seems gigantic to her and she assumes this must be the whole world. The cliffs stretch impossibly high, farther than she can crane her neck to look. The rocks are big, but not too big to climb – which she does, standing on top and looking out over the landscape, and gazing up into the sky.

Since nobody else is here, she reasons, this must be her world, and she rules it. She is the smallest thing in the world, but she is also the only thing that's alive.

She didn't know what exactly her physical form was supposed to be like, but she had a rough idea of it already ingrained in her mind, and so she went off that. Now, looking at the other holes, she notices they're all bigger than hers. Oh, well. If anyone else was here before her, it's their fault they decided to leave without waiting for her.

Time passes. The sky turns lighter and darker and back again. She looks for ways to pass the time.

She tries to change her shape, just to be a little bit taller. She squeezes her eyes shut and concentrates hard, and when she opens them she's sure the ground looks farther away. She resolves to keep working on that.

She studies the big machines. They look like they might have once been alive, or just moving. It looks like they have legs at the bottom that they'd skitter around on, and those shapes on the top were probably their heads, but they don't have any faces. She wonders how they became not-alive – the word _dead_ pops into her head – and if they looked different when they were walking around. Now they're just standing still, clinging to the walls and standing on the ground, and there's some kind of stuff inside them but she doesn't know what it's for. It's probably not important to know or she would already have the answers in her head, like with certain other things.

There's also a raised platform up on a cliff, but she can't get up to it. She can't tell what it's supposed to do, either, so she leaves it alone.

She practices her shapeshifting a bit more. There aren't many shapes to shift into, so she works on changing herself to her exact desires – she makes herself a bit taller, and makes her hair a bit longer, and tries to make her arms bigger but still can't break a rock with her fist.

She tries out what else she can do. She feels like she should be strong enough to split a rock in half. She gets the idea to stand back and rush at it, but only succeeds in making her head hurt. Then she gets the idea to roll into a ball and finally makes a sizable crack.

Good enough.

The rocks here aren't like her own, which used to be her whole body but is now on her chest. Hers is purple and shiny and clearly special. It's not a rock, it's a _gem._ It feels warm when she touches it and she gets the feeling there's something in it that she can pull out. It doesn't sound like it would work but maybe—

She concentrates on sticking her hand in her gem and grabbing whatever's in there. Nothing happens, but she keeps at it. To her surprise her fingers finally close around something solid and she yanks on it.

She finds herself holding a rope – well, it's more like three ropes, connected by a handle and each one tipped with a purple stone. It feels right in her hand, like a part of her, and she whips it at that rock with a big crack in it and—yes!

She grins at what was once one rock, proud of what she did.

As soon as she lets go of her whip, it disappears, but she knows how to get it back. She finally split that rock!

Amethyst suddenly realizes that there's no one else around to tell about what she did, no one to be proud of her for what she did but herself. She realizes for the first time that she's lonely.

One day, something new happens.

She doesn't see these people arrive, but she hears a strange noise and almost immediately hides. Not that she was afraid or anything, just that she was planning a sneak attack and didn't want whatever was coming for her to know where she was.

She hears voices, and is confused but curious.

"There's probably nothing here, this place looks like it's been dormant for ages…"

"Still. You never know. I've heard of Gems that emerged late from Kindergartens. All sorts of things can go wrong with operations like these."

Gems. Kindergartens. She's never heard those words before, but she thinks she might know what they mean.

The voices are getting closer. "But would a late Gem be _dangerous,_ or would she be less aggressive, because she was alone in here for so long?"

"Again, we don't know. Keep your weapon at hand."

Okay, Amethyst _is_ scared. She tries to pull out her whip again, but nothing happens. She's panicking. She tries to calm down, but she can't—

"Garnet! There _is_ something here!"

And now she's looking up, way up, at two very tall people. She knows somehow they're Gems, but neither of them look like her. One is pale and thin and agile-looking, holding some kind of stick with a blade on the end. The other has square-shaped hair and powerful legs and shiny glasses that cover her eyes, and has big gloves on her hands.

"Hm," says the Gem with big gloves. She does something to make them disappear. "This one doesn't look dangerous."

"Yes," says the other one, though she still has her spear. "But she is a quartz—Rose!"

Soon, an even taller Gem joins them. She has lots of pink hair and a long white dress and she looks like their leader, if size is any indication, but she doesn't have a weapon. "Oh!" she says, smiling. "It appears we have a late arrival in this site, don't we?"

Amethyst gets to her feet, trying not to look intimidated. "Who're you?"

"I'm Rose Quartz," says the pink-haired Gem. "This is Garnet, and Pearl. We're not going to hurt you," (Pearl's spear vanishes after Rose says this), "we're going to help you. We're Gems, just like you. We are the Crystal Gems, and—if you don't mind—we'd like you to come with us."

Amethyst considers this. She does want to go with them—she feels like she belongs with them, since they're the same kind of thing as her. And Rose seems nice. Still, she doesn't quite trust them yet.

"We can teach you things," says Garnet. "You can fight to defend the earth, like us. It's our home, too."

Defending the earth sounds good to Amethyst, if it is her home. "Can you teach me how to make a weapon?"

"Of course," says Rose. "We've all had to learn how to summon our weapons."

"I only did it once," says Amethyst. "But I used it to break that rock over there into two rocks!" She grins and points at the two halves.

"Very nice," says Rose. She smiles again. Amethyst decides she likes her.

"Okay," she says, "I'll go with you."

"Rose," Pearl says, quietly. "Are you sure about this?"

"Yes," Rose tells her. "She's young, and she's never been part of a quartz army. She wasn't even there for the war."

"What war?" Amethyst asks.

"It's a long story," says Rose.

"I want to hear it," says Amethyst.

"We'll tell you later," says Pearl.

"I want to hear it _now_ ," says Amethyst, not really because she wants to hear it right now, but because she feels like Pearl isn't going to tell her ever.

"You'll hear it soon enough," says Rose. "Come, follow us."

"Okay," she says. She looks back at the rocks in the valley, the only place she's ever known. Her home.

"I'm Amethyst, by the way," she says, hurrying after the Crystal Gems.

"I see," says Rose. "Take my hand." And then she jumps straight into the air and lands on the platform on the cliff.

"Whoa," says Amethyst. "Can you teach me how to do that?"

"You'll learn eventually," says Pearl, landing neatly next to them, followed by Garnet.

Amethyst grins at her. "I hope so."

Pearl wrinkles her nose. "You should get cleaned up a bit before you start exploring the temple."

Amethyst ignores her. "So what does this thing do?" she asks, looking down at the platform.

"It's a warp pad," says Garnet. "We use it for instant transport from one place to another."

"Cool!"

"Get ready," says Rose.

Amethyst closes her eyes and holds tight to Rose's hand.


End file.
